br>Spatial Cues is a series of split singles, featuring techno music by Kon Janson and myself.

CUES004 (02 May 2018)

CUES004 B is one derivative of a family of tracks that evolved around the same basic substance, primarily a number of sounds made with Massive that I had played around with on the laptop while travelling. Instead of choosing one direction and iterating endlessly on the same track, I decided to branch out my ideas and follow through with each of them, at least to a point where I could play them out and send them to friends. This was a great learning experience for me as I was able to reflect on how my ideas worked in the context of a more fleshed out arrangement.

CUES003 A had gone through a number of iterations before it finally reached a point where everything fell into place. I’ve never had this kind of closure with a track before. The element of doubt in my creative process is generally quite pronounced, but in this case it didn't haunt me as much as it normally does. The track is based on a strong visual impression, a reference that allowed me to draw on the initial mood quite easily at later stages. This definitely helped to maintain focus throughout the process.

CUES002 B was the first techno track I created after an extended hiatus in 2015. It came together fairly quickly when I was toying with a recording I had made for a drone piece, hitting a slab of concrete with a triangle and recording the sounds with two contact microphones attached to the slab. I kept coming back to a few loops I had edited, so adding the kick drum felt natural. It worked for me right away, and I decided to preserve this initial vibe by keeping the arrangement minimal and subtly building tension with the original elements.

CUES001 A is a reworked version of Concrete, an old track of mine that marked a turning point in how I write techno music – combining long, multi-tracked modular synth jams with processing and arrangement in Ableton Live. The modular synth allows me to create sound material in a playful manner, and to come up with patterns and gestures intuitively. On the other hand, I often zone out with Ableton Live and obsess over details, which is how I get most of my work done. Having a recording to work with makes it much easier for me to transition to the more tedious work.

br>listentoaheartbeat I'm curious how many layers you have going on in the kick on that tune? I think I hear like 4 or something, but it's always hard to tell when done well.

The layered saturation on that drum is fantastic. I'm always chasing the right distortion sounds and layering techniques for kicks, it's not easy. br> br>

br>listentoaheartbeat

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Futuresound wrote:

listentoaheartbeat I'm curious how many layers you have going on in the kick on that tune? I think I hear like 4 or something, but it's always hard to tell when done well.

The layered saturation on that drum is fantastic. I'm always chasing the right distortion sounds and layering techniques for kicks, it's not easy.

Indeed, it can be challenging. This one was quite a battle, too, so it’s nice to get some positive feedback! It was tuned even lower at first, but then I transposed the whole track in order to increase the fundamental to D# at 40 Hz. I bet it still sounds like a mess in some venues, or cannot be fully reproduced in others.

There are two kick drums and a noisy click on top. The first kick drum is from the JoMoX AirBase. It sounds like a hyped version of a 909 kick with a strong pitch sweep and some harmonics dialed in. It goes through the Soundtoys Decapitator, Style E with Punish enabled, mixed in at 60%. This adds a nice growling distortion, not too harsh. At first, I was using this sound as the only kick drum in the track. When I layered it with the second one, I added a high pass filter at around 2.5 kHz with a very shallow slope, followed by another instance of the Decapitator (with similar settings as the first one). This gives the layer more presence, and worked better than simply increasing the level or boosting the high frequencies.

The second kick drum is a actually a sample from a Maschine Expansion that I had used for a quick track layout at work. It’s a nicely distorted sine wave with a mellow pitch sweep and very long decay, providing a solid fundamental. I pulled it into this track when I hit a dead end trying to get the first kick drum right, and noticed that they might layer up nicely. It took some tuning and phase shifting, but in the end they matched up well. Normally, I don’t use samples from libraries, so this felt like cheating at first. I really liked the result though, so I decided to make an exception.

The noisy click supports the transient and gives the kick drum more texture. It’s a random bit from some modular recording, processed with a high pass filter at around 10 kHz. I do this a lot to create hi hats, rhythmic noises, and background textures. In this case, there is also a band pass filter with slow cutoff frequency modulation and a little bit of washed-out echo. This layer adds quite a bit of character, and it works well with some of the other sounds in the track, like the wide, gated noise layer and the ride cymbal. br> br>

br>Futuresound

br>Cool, thanks for that. How much of your workflow is hardware vs software? br> br>

br>listentoaheartbeat

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Futuresound wrote:

Cool, thanks for that. How much of your workflow is hardware vs software?

My primary sound sources are the modular synth and microphone recordings, but I edit, process, and arrange in Ableton Live. I enjoy using soft synths as well – favourites include Operator, Massive, and Kaivo. Patching in Reaktor and Max MSP is something I often get carried away with, but it's rarely part of writing a track. Additionally, there are a few effect plug-ins that are key in my current workflow: Replika XT, Decapitator, Valhalla Plate / Vintage Verb, and PSP Vintage Warmer. I often record long jams, so that's where some of the structures and gestures stem from. I've also got an Airbase, Stage Echo, and H9, all tightly integrated in Live. I recently added a Push, but I mainly use it as a front end for the Airbase. I spend a lot of time just zoning out in front of the computer screen as I am often drawn to detail. br> br>